Slack, LinkedIn and the Trouble with Social Networks

There’s one lesson from the Microsoft-LinkedIn deal that companies like Slack should keep in mind: It’s really hard to make big money off a social network unless it has both scale and engagement.

Facebook and LinkedIn started within a year of each other. But now, more than a dozen years later, Facebook counts nearly one out of every seven people on the planet as daily active users. In contrast, LinkedIn recently hit 425 million registered members globally, of which only about a quarter use it even monthly. LinkedIn doesn’t disclose the number of daily active users.